Good fundraisers persuade; weak ones try to convince

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04 December 2012

Good fundraisers persuade; weak ones try to convince

Here's a distinction from Seth Godin's blog that could help you do better at fundraising: Persuade vs. convince.

Marketers don't convince. Engineers convince. Marketers persuade. Persuasion appeals to the emotions and to fear and to the imagination. Convincing requires a spreadsheet or some other rational device.

If you're spending a lot of your time trying to convince people, it's no wonder it's not working.

Same for fundraisers. We should be persuaders, not convincers. Make people believe and act by touching their hearts. Because you can't argue your way into their lives.

Posted by Jeff Brooks on 04 December 2012 at 07:57 | Permalink

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The future of fundraising is not about social media, online video, or SEM. It's not about any technology, medium, or technique. It's about donors. If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them. And the future? It's already here. More.

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Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 30 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you'll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com. More.

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